A Day At the Races

Yesterday was my first swim meet since I've been back from Africa. I was almost desperate to have my times get faster. It was the last normal meet of the season. The conditions couldn't have been much worse for improving times, though. It was freezing cold and rainy, and the wind was blowing. Yes, in Kansas, in the middle of July. The coldest day within a time slot of 5 months just had to be on the day I needed good weather. I was pretty cold (being all wet didn't help much either). And the water was warm. As soon as you dove into it, your muscles got all soft, and relaxed... Which is not a good thing for us swimmers. But I tried not to think much of it. I just tried my hardest to stay warm (which was impossible). And I told myself that I was going to swim hard. REALLY hard. We started off with a relay, which went pretty well. No glitches. Then came my big event. The 100 meter butterfly. I was six seconds from making a
Division II (basically like Sub-State) time. Now, if your not a racer (track swimming... whatever), 6 seconds is a long time. A very long time. And if your not a swimmer, trying to six seconds off of a butterfly race is about the equivalent of trying to get to Africa 18 hours before you normally would. With good weather. (If you were wondering, I totally made up that whole Africa part). But yeah, that is how hard it is. Anyways... guess what... I didn't make it. I was kinda put out about it, but it didn't ruin my day or anything. So, thats how the big race turned out. The rest of the day went on like that. No one improved any times. Most people added a few seconds (namely, me). By the time, the meet was starting to wind down, people were getting tired of being there and everyone wanted to go home. People started scratching out of their races on purpose (namely, NOT me!!!). My coach always puts me in the distance events, which also happen to be at the very end of the day, not because I'm a really good distance swimmer, but because no one enters those races, and we get a few promised points out of it (when people ask me though, I just tell them it's cause my coach thinks I can handle it). First I swam the 200 meter freestyle, which I surprisingly ended up taking almost 2 seconds off of. That was weird. To be completely honest with you, I hardly even remember anything about that race, but I took time off, so I'm happy. (Don't tell my coach I said that!) I was just going to swim the 400 meter nice and easy. It was my last race of the day, and to beat the next placed girl ahead of me, I would have to take off even more time than my butterfly. And, you'll never guess this one. I took 16 seconds off, yes, I said sixteen. AND I qualified. I don't even know how I did it. I the only thing I did was sprint the last 75 meters, so I could catch a girl that was just half a body length ahead of me (which is not easy in a distance race). I was talking with another coach afterwards and he said I had paced mysefl out really well. Then, I remembered that when we first started the was a girl that I kept up with. I remember hearing in my head. "Just stay up there with her, match her pace, and you'll be fine." It's really easy in a distance race to talk to yourself like that (or sing songs in your head, or think about what you're going to wear the next day, or think about all sorts of interesting subjects... Hey! It's a long race! You would get bored too!) Anyways, after the race, I realized that the voice I was listening to was NOT mine. The only one it could've belonged to is God. Then, I remembered the one challenge that I had when I was deciding to go to Uganda: What about my swimming. This was supposed to be my year. I'm at the top of my age group. I'm getting faster. Then I decided to let God take care of it. I went home that night and told him that I would go to Africa, and I would hand my swim season to him. I knew that if I did what he had called me to do, go to Uganda, and put my swimming in his hands, then he would bless it. And guess what... Thats exactly what he did. It just so happened to be in way that I wouldn't have expected him to.

These pictures aren't from this meet, because it's sunny outside. They're from the same place, so guess thay are last years pictures. Yes, that is me, by the way.

Cheesy Fourth of July

Yesterday was the big ol' Fourth of July. My family and I went to the baseball game (only to watch them lose) but then, there were fireworks. I didn't Ooh and Aah along with everybody else, like I do every other year . As the stadium lights dimmed, and the fireworks started exploding in the air, my mind went back to Uganda, for the ten-billionth time since we got back to Kansas. First, I wonder how they would react to all the fireworks. I don't know this for sure, but unless they do like homeade fireworks or something, they would probably be scared at first of all the big lights and big booms!!! But then I wondered, if they felt the same freedom that I did. This sounds so cheesy right now, but it really made me proud to be an American. It reminded me of all that I take for granted every day. Cheesy? Yes. Corny? Yes. True? Absolutely.

Getting Back Into the Flow of Things

Well, we are home. It's good to be here, and I gotta tell ya, it felt AMAZING to sleep in my own bed last night! Just wanted to let all ya'll now that I got home safe, but my mind is on something else. I am really wondering how I'm going to carry on the rest of my life as it is. I just can't continue living the way I was before Africa. What my eyes have seen in Uganda has changed all of that. How am I supposed to carry on with my life, though? The way God wants me to, of course. That is the Sunday School answer, but I can't really find the true answer deep in my heart. How can I continue to live all that has been shown to me in Uganda? It's really hard. We live in a society that has forgotten something that the Ugandans haven't. I can't tell you exactly what that is, but I have it now, and I don't want to lose it. I can't lose it.

Cruisin' the Nile

I lied. I said I'd write on here the next day, but I didn't. I'm here now though. The last day was pretty busy. We were in such a hurry to get packed, and we all also wanted to go out on the town one last time before leaving, so that is my excuse. The Nile trip was a lot of fun. I personally think that it was better than the safari. We saw all sorts of things: hippos, water buffalo, kingfishers, crocodiles, warthogs, elephants, waterbuck... The list could go on.

Weird fact about the Nile: In the mornings, there is foam EVERYWHERE. It comes from Murchinson's Falls, and just floats on down the river (And flies up and gets all over your shirt. Poor Amber!). As the day goes on, the sun makes most of it evaporate.

The very first thing that we saw were hippos. It's crazy how big those things are!!! JJ calls them giant water pigs :)

There were a bunch of kingfishers flying around everywhere. They were pretty, and fun to watch. We actually went by the Kingfisher mating/nesting grounds, which were a ton of itty-bitty holes pecked into the side of a cliff. I thought it was pretty cool.

If you look really close, you can see the little holes. Here, let me help you out on that.

The base of Murchinson's Falls is where all of the crocodiles live. They eat all of the animals that fall down, well, the falls.

Well, thats mostly all for now. We saw a few more good animals, but I'm mostly out of good pictures.